Working together to rebuild

The world watched on in horror at the apocalyptic images of people in Mallacoota in the East Gippsland region of Victoria being forced to the water's edge by fire the summer of 2019–2020. The recovery after the devastation of the bushfires in East Gippsland and the northeast of Victoria continues today.

One of the local businesses affected was Mallacoota Golf Club. The club house survived but the pump station, pump shed, and wiring were destroyed. The golf club has continued to operate, but until recently the owners have been unable to irrigate at all.

Working alongside the Mallacoota Golf Club to help rebuild, Rural & Turf Irrigation supplied a Lowara e-SV pump booster system, customised by Brown Brothers Engineers Australia with a 4VF drive unit, a Hydrovar controller unit on each pump, and a filter donated by Triangle Filtration.

“The previous system was really old” said Greg Sinclair from Rural Turf & Irrigation, “The new system has seen a major improvement for the Mallacoota Golf Club’s irrigation, providing higher efficiencies with reduced watering time and significant pressure increases. The club could not be happier and have described their new system as fantastic.”

The new irrigation control system is a Rain Bird IC system, which performs diagnostics for the pump shed equipment. Greg says that for this kind of job, technology has improved immensely in recent years, “This control system is much better than earlier systems for diagnostics and ease of use. The club’s previous system was automated but was very limited compared with the new one”.

Gary Horton from Triangle says that this was a good example of community and the irrigation industry coming together to help a local business, “Wally Menke, the principal of the company [Triangle] has strong family ties to the Mallacoota area, and donating the filter seemed a good way to help out”.

At this stage, the greens of the 18-hole course are irrigated with water from a dam, supplemented by a reclaimed effluent system; the fairways are not irrigated.

The club is now looking to redesign the course and expand their irrigation system in the future, adding new sprinklers and pipework.

[Article originally appeared in the Irrigation Australia Journal]